Harry Potter is getting a makeover. The boy wizard’s seven adventures, penned by the world’s first billionaire novelist, JK Rowling, are being given new covers by publisher Bloomsbury this summer as it looks to recapture just a little of its magic.

The absence of a new Potter book left the publisher out of pocket last year, with profits down 35%, but announcing the company’s annual results, chief executive Nigel Newton said trading had been “excellent”.

He added that the company, also home to chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal, was hoping to find space for digital editions of its books on Apple’s new iPad, due to go on sale in the US on Saturday and in the UK a few weeks later.

Bloomsbury’s profits have dropped so much in the past year that they’re going to reprint the series with new covers. I give it 18 months before Rowling is bullied into allowing ebooks.

Beatles are now available for digital download though still not available on streaming services like Spotify. If they'd held out any longer (2013 in UK) their songs would start moving into the public domain anyway, perhaps the current holders decided it's time to cash in now while they still have the chance.

We've got a significant wait before that happens with Harry Potter though :P

Bloomsbury’s profits have dropped so much in the past year that they’re going to reprint the series with new covers. I give it 18 months before Rowling is bullied into allowing ebooks.

Bullied how? Rowling is already a billionaire from Harry Potter sales. What can they do to get her to relent?

(I'd try to amass statistics demonstrating the number of younger readers reading ebooks, and do my best to convince her she was depriving the audience she wrote the books for of opportunities to read the books in another format they liked.)

And Bloomsbury is recapitulating Scholastic. The US President of Scholastic resigned several years back because revenues and profits were way down. Why? Because the then next Harry Potter book was late, and the revenues would not count in that year's results, leading to a huge blip in their financials.

Where's the leverage? How do you bully someone who is worth 100s of millions of pounds and has complete and utter control?

They could point out to her that there are already ebooks of all the HP books in circulation. Illegal certainly, but absolutely perfect in execution. Certainly far better than ANY officially released ebook I've ever seen.

They could point out to her that there are already ebooks of all the HP books in circulation. Illegal certainly, but absolutely perfect in execution. Certainly far better than ANY officially released ebook I've ever seen.

Er, so I've heard, allegedly, that is.

Heck, they could save some money and grab those nice ebooks off the darknet and sell them.

Bloomsbury’s profits have dropped so much in the past year that they’re going to reprint the series with new covers. I give it 18 months before Rowling is bullied into allowing ebooks.

Harry Potter saved Bloomsbury from bankruptcy and gave it a new lease of life (and left several agents and bigger publishers with egg on their faces after they'd turned it down). But it's not as if they didn't have hugely ample warning that the HP cash cow was about to yield its last slice of sirloin.

I have no doubt that HP will be repackaged many times for each succeeding generation, and Bloomsbury certainly need to have something to offer to tie in with the next 2 movies as they finally plod to their end. I'm sure they've taken a long look at how George Allen & Unwin (and subsequently HarperCollins) milked the Tolkien franchise for all it's worth.

eBooks would be nice, but there are a host of ways they can keep the brand in front of shoppers' faces while sticking with print.

What this reprint will be like? Just new covers? Anything else special? I doubt it. They lost the skill to produce special editions. People who already own Harry Potter set are not going to shed money for another similar edition. Bloomsbury failed to produce a really good special edition even at the first attempt.

Bullied how? Rowling is already a billionaire from Harry Potter sales. What can do to get her to relent?

(I'd try to amass statistics demonstrating the number of younger readers reading ebooks, and do my best to convince her she was depriving the audience she wrote the books for of opportunities to read the books in another format they liked.)

And Bloomsbury is recapitulating Scholastic. The US President of Scholastic resigned several years back because revenues and profits were way down. Why? Because the then next Harry Potter book was late, and the revenues would not count in that year's results, leading to a huge blip in their financials.

If all your eggs are in one basket...
______Dennis

Exactly, and just howmany Under 16's read eBooks, is it a big market, we could put a Poll in here to see ?